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“Ouch” I grumble. “She refuses, and he still took her home?”
“Screamed the place down, according to Baybridge’s records. Called her kid pathetic. He’s her worst mistake. Said she regrets ever knowing him and that he’s the reason her marriage broke down. Director Brewer says Coral is not lucid, and that she seemed to be stuck in the past—hovering around the early two-thousands.”
“Jesus.” I rub a hand over my jaw. “She’s stuck back then, which means she’s screaming that shit at, what, a toddler? A five-year-old?”
“That’s about the gist of it,” he confirms. “Probably cause any guy to develop some mommy issues. However, O’Dey did the course and signed her out, and whenever she would scream at him, he kept his cool and proved to the center he understood her outbursts resulted from her FTD. Is that all you need?”
“I’d like to talk to her.” I bring my phone away from my ear and hit speaker so Fletch can listen too. “I wonder if she’d be up for visitors?”
“Director of the facility was pretty forthcoming with information and pushed home that Coral isn’t making a lot of sense these days. I don’t have a problem with you knocking on her door, but I don’t know what you’ll get from her.”
“I’d like to try anyway.” I set the phone on the table and reach down to grab my coat. “We’ll head over there now to see what we see. O’Dey is clearly not her only caregiver, since she needs constant help and he has a regular job. So we’ll swing by and hope to get something out of her. Then I intend to pull Ethan in. I want him off the streets before nightfall, Lieutenant.”
“Sounds to me like you’re gonna miss a sit-down dinner tonight, Detective. At this point in time, you have motive, you have reasonable opportunity, you have a hell of a lot of circumstantial, but you don’t have a single shred of proof Ethan O’Dey did this.”
“So we’ll get him to tell us all about it.” I swing my coat on and fix my gun holster when it tweaks to the side. “We’ll remain in contact. Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“No problem. Tie it up nice and tight, Detectives. Leave no room for him to walk again.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ending the call, I look to Fletch and drop my phone into my pocket. “We might have to drop into Baybridge after this. Are you gonna be okay with that?”
“It’s fine.” He grabs his coat too and hurriedly tidies the files on the table. “We’ll talk to her real quick. Then I wanna pull Ethan in before the vigilante catches wind of what’s going on.”
“The vigilante?” Wrinkling my nose, I yank the conference room door open and wait for my partner to pass through. We cross the pit and head toward the escalators at a fast clip. “Why the hell would you think of that asshole right now?”
“Because ifweknow who did it, what’s the bet others are piecing it together too? I’m all for taking O’Dey off the streets, but I’d like for us to be able to close the books. Not set them on fire.”
I chuckle and step onto the escalator as we head down. “He’s not all-seeing, ya know? Just because we know it’s O’Dey doesn’t mean the city knows.”
At that, Fletcher’s golden colored stare comes to mine.
Unless the vigilante is a cop, like our rat said.
“Fuck.” Conceding, I move down the stairs so we descend twice as fast. “Let’s get this closed out. We’ll talk to Coral first and see what she has to say about her little boy. Then we’ll go find Ethan and yank him in for a chat.”
“And if he gets another before we’re done with his mother?” Fletch counters. “Then what?”
“We just gotta hope he doesn’t. We need more than what we’ve got right now, and if we pull him in too soon, we might blow the whole case.”
